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As more and more people are buying laptops i decided it would be a good time to review one of the greatest investments one could ever make for a laptop. The Antec Notebook Cooler S is a great way to keep your laptop cool and help prevent overheating.

Here are a few shots of the packaging in which the cooler itself comes in:
As you can see it comes nicely packaged in a molded plastic container which keeps it from moving around and getting damaged in the shipping process.

After removing the cooler from the package there is an instruction sheet inside that tells you exactly how to place the cooler under your laptop and also contains some useful information the cooler, like operating voltage, CFM, noise level produced, fan speed, and the current used by the fans in High and low operating speeds.

This particular cooler takes in cold air from behind the laptop and forces it under the laptop, which is almost necessary since many modern laptops suck in air from the bottom and force the hot air out from the side.

Here are a few pictures of the cooler.
Front
Top (those 2 grills are metal (i think aluminum), which help cool the air going into the cooler)
Back

The top of the cooler has 2 rubber grips on 2 of the corners the laptop is supposed to sit on, but some laptops including mine have raised parts on the bottom of the laptop so it doesn't sit perfectly on the cooler. I fixed this problem by putting some cardboard between the laptop and the cooler where it didn't touch at the corners.

In the top picture you can see that there are 2 80mm fans, and a wide opening for the cold air to come out from. These fans are extremely quiet in low speed mode and about as loud as a whisper in high speed.

Here we see the Pass-through USB power cord.
This power cord allows you to run the cooler without sacrificing a USB port. It seems to be a very durable connector unlike many other connectors of its type. The actual power cord comes out of the side of the connector, making it easy to run the cord along the side of the laptop and help reduce the jungle of other cords you may have near your laptop.

Last but not least, here is a picture of the cooler in action.
Here we can clearly see the bright blue power led on the back of the device located beside the speed selection switch.
As you can see the cooler fits pretty nicely under my 15.4inch laptop without taking up much space on my desk.

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for.
How well does this device actually perform?

Well here is a graph of the CPU temperature. To the left is where the cooler was not on (for 30minutes) and to the right you can see the drastic temperature drop once the cooler was turned on (low speed setting).
starting temp: 133F (56.1C), ending temp: 128F (53.3C)

Here we see a graph with the cooler turned off while doing some pwning in Battlefield 2.
Average temp during 2 hours of intense gaming: 136F (57.7C)

Now for the best part.
The laptop had been running for a good 2 hours while I worked on the new layout for my site, without the cooler running. Then I plugged the cooler in and set it to high speed, and within seconds the temperature began dropping. Once I closed Photoshop, it dropped even faster to the point where the CPU temperature was around 123F (50.5C) all in less than 3minutes.
starting temp: 139F (59.4C), ending temp:123F (50.5C)
Under normal usage the temperature remains in the 129F (54C) to 131F (55C) and when idle, the temperature remains around 123F (50.5C)

Conclusion:
Pros: sleek design, powerful fans, very quiet, does its job very well

Cons: none

Suggestions: make it a little wider for those who have bigger laptops (15.4in and up)

A company that will go to the ends of the Earth for its people will find it can hire them for about 10% of the cost of Americans.